Watching this interview with BPB engineering, apparently they approached Mack, Vekoma and Intamin about the project and it was "only really a fag paper between all of them". Apparently the proposal that Mack gave initially "wasn't that exciting compared with some of the others, but we had a lot of faith in those guys as designers". Nick Thompson was inspired by Cheetah Hunt.
Hmm. So basically we could have had a "more exciting" mini Taron. I am assuming they were much more expensive than Mack or maybe they thought the Mack layout was more family friendly.
And also fun fact: Some initial Mack designs had issues with "exceeding what the train was capable of doing" due to the compact layout so there were lots of revisions.
Confirmation that they've stopped painting the woodies as well.
Interesting.